I quietly released Infernew on the workshop a week ago to make it easier for people to
playtest and have been tweaking it ever since based on feedback.
Now, I officially declare Infernew_v1 ready to play.
You’ll find a link to the download and to servers in the description of this video.
In the next few minutes I’ll be showcasing the changes, and explaining the difficulties
I faced.
In short: Remaking Inferno has been difficult, mostly because nobody seems to agree on changes.
I received hundreds of suggestions from you guys, many of which conflicted with other
suggestions.
The difficulty was striking a balance.
I decided to base the major changes on suggestions from pros from this video here, most notably
Friberg, who is undisputed King of Banana.
Unlike with my remake of Newke last year, for Infernew I’ve avoided large changes
to the map’s layout.
Others have gone there.
Xen’s InfernoX has a very fancy alternative entrance to B which I really like and would
love to see how others think it plays.
But for this one, I’ve wanted to remain as faithful to the older versions as I can.
Valve has shown that even Nuke didn’t need drastic changes to majorly improve it, so
I’ve tried to think up smart little fixes rather than radically changing an area and
saying that it’s better.
The biggest change to gameplay was made to Banana.
Everybody agrees something needed doing to this area.
I started by stripping the pillars away to make the whole area a lot more open, as was
suggested by several pros.
But this created another issue: it made CT sniping even more overpowered!
This had me stuck for a while.
I consulted 1.6 and made CT snipers have to stick out the other side of the cover to shoot.
I also simplified the cover and made it more bangable.
But this still left banana very open.
So I also added some very tactically placed cover for terrorists which successfully obstructs
CT’s vision and gives terrorists a number of places to shoot from if they choose to.
It’s all very delicately positioned.
Let me know how it plays out for you.
I also widened the opening to B and changed the cover around.
Most controversially, I added a wooden wall here.
CTs standing here will risk getting shot through it when retreating to cover.
But it lets players form a powerful boost over the top if they risk 2 players in this
vulnerable position.
It could be OP, but I’m not sure for which team yet.
Let me know how it plays!
Next up is the wildcard.
The one actual change to the layout, based on Mystic Cheese’s suggestion to combine
bedroom and main room in apartments.
I know I said I tried to avoid large changes, but this wasn’t change for changes’ sake-
it neatly solved most of the other issues that apartments seemed to have.
It makes it harder for CTs to lurk.
It makes the whole area a lot more….
DYNAMIC.
There are even fancy grenades that either side can do to improve their chances in this
area.
I haven’t widened the corridors, which was also suggested a couple of times.
If everybody can agree that it would be a good thing to do then I will for the next
version.
And how about the truck here?
Everybody’s favourite prop!
I’ve changed it to hay which you may consider a strange choice, but I think it works.
In fact, I’ve actually reduced the number of crates in this level wherever possible!
I’ve also carefully clipped this stuff to make it easy to scale, which may change timings
in apartments if CTs can get there more easily.
We’ll see.
But I’m happy with how this bit has turned out.
Inferno’s T spawn was a disaster.
A lot of you suggested opening up the other way out again… much like in Source.
But let’s face it- that way was longer, had no advantages and nobody would take it
for any reason other than when the main one gets blocked by griefers.
So I widened the main entrance, removed clutter and added a hell of a lot of swag, making
the start of the rounds far less infuriating.
This bit was prone to bugs and complications, so I’ve deepened it so you can run through
it.
This may or may not solve all of the problems people were having with it, but it’s certainly
a lot less hassle to use now and feels a lot more fun.
I made bombsite A less of a camp-fest.
There are already a number of places that people guarding the site can hide so I’ve
experimented with removing some cover from the site itself.
I also removed the railings from graveyard, made pit less OP by raising this statue thing
so it hides people in apartments and added a bangable wall here.
I’m excited about this.
It’s just the right height so people in the site can’t see approaching players and
from it you can spray through to most of the site.
I can’t wait to see how this plays in practice.
I also closed up construction to reduce the number of camping spots, as it was always
a very messy part of the map.
I made the pond in B far easier to see through and stopped players from being able to exploit
the gap here, which I felt was very overpowered.
A moderator over on Reddit suggested changing the bomb area to one slightly more covered,
so I shifted it towards this side of the site, giving bomb planters and defusers more cover.
This could be a massive change to how the site plays.
Those are the big changes.
I also brightened the lighting and added a sunny skybox.
Because I’m lazy.
It’s a cheap way of making a map look better.
If I had my way, every map would be set on a beautiful day, with the sun shining down.
I’ll leave it to Valve to try and make other weather conditions look as good in their maps!
I’ve also removed invisible walls so that grenades won’t get artificially blocked
and have made it so that you can wallbang from here through to here.
These things damage the optimisation but that brings me onto the second ground rule of this
project: if it improves gameplay, I don’t care.
Infernew, much like Newke, isn’t intended to be perfect or even a graphically polished
map.
It’s a stepping stone that may help to give Valve good ideas to make their official remake
better.
And while it’s being changed, I’d rather not get bogged down by criticisms about how
this map looks visually, which I fear may be the source of some of the criticism I’ve
received so far.
And it’s worth saying that although the changes I’ve made came from other people,
the outcome is still very much MY remake, since I’ve made the final decisions regarding
which changes to try.
So I’m not saying that this is perfect, or that you’ll agree with everything.
It’s very much a work-in-progress, with changes that have some degree of logic behind
them.
That didn’t stop the original Infernew release from being met with a mixed reception.
I was accused of the ‘old strip and stretch’, making the map look ugly by removing unnecessary
clutter, and for addressing issues in an inelegant way.
I was disappointed by this as I worked on this project with the best of intentions.
I hope that this video shows the logic behind the changes.
I’m not against constructive criticism- of which I’ve received plenty.
Thanks to those who have done this, I’ve tried my best to add your suggestions to the
map in the past week.
But I do dislike purely negative remarks that don’t offer alternative solutions.
And some people mistake their opinions for facts, or base their opinions on the screenshots
rather than how the gameplay changes, which is something that I’ve always handled poorly.
So please, if you genuinely want to help improve this project, load up this map and test it
with and against real people and see how it plays.
That’s the next step.
Download the map, play it and then post your suggestions to the Reddit post I’ve created
for V2 of this project.